Waiting for the Abyss' Stare
by KrisEleven
Summary: Waiting is sometimes the hardest part, especially when it is someone you love staring into the abyss and you want nothing more than to reach out and pull them back. Except the battle inside... it cannot be fought by others.
1. The Dark Thread that Binds

_Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it._ Terry Pratchett

* * *

The flickering, revolving shadows on the wall of the tent would not leave Lark be.

It was just a matter of the lanterns and candles, she knew. No steady mage-lights here in the tent— the power they required could not be spared this night, when so much was at stake just keeping the shelter secure and on the rock in the midst of the storm. Truthfully, Lark would have given every one of them up had they been supplied. Anything to make her student's dark task a little easier.

And yet, the shadows were still there and Lark could not take her attention from them.

_They are just shadows!_ she told herself, firmly. But then, what was it Sandry was struggling so hard against as Lark sat here, waiting, if not shadows?

Lark almost laughed, exhaustion instead turning it into a bitter smile. How ironic. Because, after all, Sandry had been fighting shadows for much, much longer than this night. The fact that this great threat would come in the form of her greatest fear.... Lark couldn't imagine that it was not a twist of the gods. At the same time, she could not believe them to be so cruel.

Not so cruel as to force her Sandry to face the darkness yet _again_, when she had had more of the darkness than any child should in a lifetime.

Niko had taken Lark aside, one day soon after their arrival at Discipline, when the children were out, and explained to her how Sandry had been found. While Lark tried to feel relief that she _had _been found, Mila be praised, at the same time she was... angry. Angry that these things could happen to children, angry that it took so long, angry that she could do nothing to help her erase the memories and the fear of the little girl who was so strong while so fragile.

She met the Duke's eye from across the tent and she smiled encouragingly. He responded fractionally and went back to his pacing. One gesture had another Dedicate handing him soothing tea and encouraging him to sit near the heating rocks while he drank it.

Lark had told him that Sandry could do this. And now- _now?_- she was starting to get doubts.

It wasn't Sandry's strength, magically. She had no doubts about the strength of her student, already a liscenced mage at fourteen (the thought still shocked her, sometimes). She believed whole-heartedly that Sandry's magic was enough to control the un-magic in that tent, to do the job they had agreed must be done. Lark had no doubts about Sandry's strength of character, either—her stubbornness alone would get the job done, even if the fourteen year old hadn't also had bravery, dedication and her sense of duty to lead her through it. And so, why was Lark now staring at shadows on a tent's wall, worrying?

_There can be too much darkness in one person._

And there it was, Lark's silent fear. Her fear was that, one day, the darkness would overtake the heart of her Sandry and the girl would be destroyed by it. Perhaps there was only so much time that could be spent with shadows before the light within the heart was distinguished? Perhaps Sandry, so touched by darkness already, was already on that thin line between darkness and light? Lark tried not to believe it, but in her heart, something in her told her this was true. The light in her almost-daughter would be distinguished by the darkness that surrounded her until she was destroyed or, worse, until she was changed, all the goodness that was to be found in her warped or extinguished by the shadows which would not—

"No," Lark said, softly. She closed her eyes, trying to block out the shadows on the wall. When she realized that, instead, she now stared into complete darkness, not even a bitter smile would come at the irony.

----------

Lark sat and waited at Discipline. She waited on news of Sandry, but all she heard was that her student was not seeing anyone.

Lark prayed that Sandry was not sitting alone in the darkness.

Comas skirted around her even more than usual, and Lark realized how much she had been sitting and fretting. She tried to smile, but it was forced. She knew it, and felt its pressure, even if her student looked relieved and smiled, shakily, back.

The days passed slowly, and the nights even longer. She wished Rosie were home, even if there was nothing they could do but hold each other until it was decided, one way or another.

And then, suddenly, Sandry was there, again. And perhaps she was some darker for what had happened, but Lark saw all the goodness in her, all the strength. More strength, perhaps for having to fight for it. More light, perhaps, for facing the darkness.

Lark held her almost-daughter tight and said a prayer.

May her light always outshine the darkness.

* * *

_Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that._ Martin Luther King, Jr.

* * *

A/N Thanks for reading! This is going to be a small multi-chapter, with each teacher in a key moment of the Circle Opens series. I'm not sure what inspired this, except that their interpretations of what they do plays a large role in Will of the Empress and I wonder if their teachers were ever as concerned as they were. And, let's face it; the four do a lot of pretty scary stuff. Well, that is my attempt at showing my thought process, not great, admittedly... I should stick with prose. Thanks to SSS, who, I am sure, looked this over (and to LunaSphere, who caught my mistake in a review {like old times, eh, Luna?})


	2. Every Rose

_Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh._ Emile M. Cioran.

* * *

Rosethorn had to instruct herself to breathe.

It wasn't that she wasn't expecting something. But _something_, even when it involved her boy, wasn't usually as dramatic as all this.

She was standing in the street among the other onlookers who crowded in an unnatural hush a safe distance away from the house of Lady Zenadia doa Attaneh which was now covered—grounds, structure, walls and all—with thick vines, towering trees and escaping vegetation. She walked slowly around the entire building, listening as she took in all the damage Briar had caused while she was gone. The people whispered around her at the cause, and she noted a few of the reoccurring whispered stories to investigate, but dismissed the rest. Spies from the capital, vengeful spirits… she _just _stopped herself from scolding them for their foolishness. Just. She had more important things to deal with, after all.

Rosethorn had a working understanding of the language of this dust-ridden pox-hole city, and the fact that the shouts from the Chammuran Watchmen who hacked at the plants creeping along the gates were words she did not recognize was not a good sign. She always knew how to identify the worst curses in a foreign language; most people stopped themselves from swearing in front of a Dedicate of any temple.

She turned her back on the house as the vines actually stole an axe from the hands of an irate Watchmen. She wanted to talk to them; to tell them just how futile it would be to try and get rid of plant-life with so much magic thrust into them, but now was not a good time. There would be no talking to them without losing her temper until they calmed down a mite themselves, and she thought losing her temper would be a very bad idea with them already jumping at every weed that sprouted by their boots.

The city was warm, still, but growing dark as Rosethorn walked its dusty streets towards the first of the rumours. It was a long walk from the Jeweled Crescent back into the slums where the Viper gang had made its nest, but then, that was how the nobles of anyplace liked it. She tried to pretend that she was leaving only because it was practical to wait for a better time in which to speak to the Watchmen. It had nothing to do with the _hatred _and the _anger _and the _violence_ which practically radiated from the mansion where Briar had created a forest in the desert based on nothing but those hidden dark feelings he kept in his heart.

Dust got into her eyes, making them water and Rosethorn rubbed them impatiently.

She almost forgot it when she came across the next sight where Briar had left his mark on Chammur.

She had seen death before, but her heart still clenched at everybody she had to pray into Mila's peaceful embrace. And these were just _children_. In those awful gang colours, surely, but children all the same who were caught in Briar's tangled vines. The one door still blocked the entrance-way to the gang's... house (Rosethorn could barely use the term to describe it), but the locals had seen that the gang was defenceless through the other door, and through a broken wall that _must_ have been the work of Evvy, and they had had their revenge. The Watch had an unmoving body already laying on the street, and were pulling another loose while a dark, worn-looking man still tried to get at him.

"They killed my Thay!" the man yelled, being held back by a Watchman, his wooden weapon taken from his grasp so he could no longer hit the defenceless body of the boy who hung before him. "They killed my daughter!"

Rosethorn closed her eyes. She could have convinced herself that Briar had not known this would happen when he left these street children trussed in his bindings, but Rosethorn had never been one to try and fool herself.

Tired, Rosethorn went to the nearest baths, hiding in the steaming water within dark rooms as she tried to forget what she had seen, both through her eyes and the eyes of the plants. She didn't want to think about Briar leaving children to be beaten, or killing guards just because they worked for a woman he despised, or his vines shredding that…. She didn't want to think of what it meant for him to have lived his entire life without any kindness, and having to see the darkest sides of human nature. She didn't want to think of the things that happened to children with no one to protect them, or the knives, or a ten-year old's fear of rats, or her _arrogance _to think that she could feed him until she couldn't see his bones, and teach him to speak without the accent of the slums and even love him and that it would, somehow, take that darkness away.

She soaked until she couldn't stand it anymore and then she stood in a stream of water and gasped in the cold air.

-----

Only later, after he had told her about the dreams and about the people he had found there. Only later, when he had cried about people he could not have protected, and gingerly took a kitten from his student's hand to send her to bed, did Rosethorn go to the last place the rumours of the hushed onlookers at the mansion had spoken about.

The grapevine was surrounded by people, even this long after it had, miraculously, grown out of the desert courtyard. She touched her hand to it and closed her eyes. Inside, she could feel the helpless, endless rage that had taken over the house and surrounded the gang youth but, at the same time she felt a protective instinct and a noble desire to make the world better for at least _someone_. In the trunk of the massive vine was hope as well as destruction.

Rosethorn wondered if they would always go hand in hand with her boy. Because, maybe years of fear and pain could not be loved out of a person, but— maybe— a noble spirit and strength and love itself couldn't be scared or beaten out of them, either.

She nodded her head, gave the vine one more pat and walked away, nudging and glaring people out of her path.

* * *

_But he that dares not grasp the thorn, Should never crave the rose._ Anne Bronte.


	3. To Fight Fire

_The fire you burn for your enemy often burns yourself more than them._ Chinese proverb.

* * *

It was a beautiful day, if you were able to ignore the chill that seemed permanent in this frozen wasteland of a country.

And, of course, if you were anywhere, _anywhere_, but here.

Frostpine set himself deeper into his layers of warm clothing, looking across at his student as he did so. She looked as if she were set in stone, her dark eyes set forward without a flicker in their steady gaze from the platform where her one-time friend would soon be put to death.

The part of Frostpine that had dedicated the past twenty-five years to the peace of a Circle temple wanted to be sick, wanted to scream at the councillors of this frozen city to end this madness.

The part of Frostpine that had left his family full of rage because of _their _betrayal wanted to burn Ben himself.

It wasn't Frostpine who Ben had betrayed, of course. He looked again at Daja and her face of stone and felt the anger at Ben rise. How dare he kill all those people for _nothing_? How dare he use something Daja had created for good. How dare he be yet another face in a line of those who had let her down?

She had yet to show any anger. She had yet to show any emotion at all.

It was not as if it was unusual, of course. She was not prone to temper like Trisana, or to bouts of rage like Briar or even to Sandriline's stubborn and emotional defences of her friends. Daja was always the calm one, the steady one. She would argue with any of them, would fight (and had, more often than even Frostpine was aware, he was sure), would get into more trouble than he knew what to do with, but she did it rationally and without emotion.

It frightened him, more and more. What if the mask became what she was inside? How many times could she let those she cared about throw her aside and betray everything she gave them, everything she deserved from them?

Ben was brought out into the sun, blinking. His stone face matched Daja's and it twisted Frostpine's heart.

The crowd was loud as Ben was tied upon the stake. Frostpine thought, oddly, that they should have been stricken to silence, as he was beside his student: cold as iron. Instead they called their rage in foul curses that never seemed to reach Ben's ears.

Beside him, Daja's gaze never flickered.

Frostpine felt rather than saw the fire being lit beneath Ben, watching Daja's face as he was. He closed his eyes and felt it, though. He couldn't help but feel it as the fire ate through the kindling provided to it, as it rejoiced as it grew and recreated itself from a spark into a blaze, as it found the edges of Ben's feet and clothes. Soon, Frostpine knew, Ben would begin to burn and his silence, at least, would be broken. Frostpine wasn't sure if Daja's would ever, ever be broken after that.

His power shot out before he had fully decided to do it. He just could not—would not—allow her to sit and watch a man she had once claimed as her friend die. To do so would be a betrayal of her; he was her teacher and was supposed to protect her. He would find a way to get through to her after this, he had to, but for now this was the only thing he could do for her.

But then, the flames rose high, devouring Ben in an instant and Frostpine felt her power mixed in with his. The mask was just a mask. She couldn't watch him burn, either. As the ashes fell, he set his arm around her shoulders and let her lean on him. They would leave this place and its memories, as soon as the passes cleared. It was his responsibility to her. He would not fail her.

* * *

_Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death can erase our good deeds. _Buddha.


	4. Descent into the Maelstrom

A/N Thank you Sarah! You're beast. Okay. I feel like this may require a note of explanation. I am not sure where the idea of Niko's 'traitor-voice'came from, but it is not intended to be an example of a psychosis. It is Niko arguing with himself. Somehow, it turned out this way and since this is very much from Niko's point of view, it's not something he would think of explaining, especially as he has probably been thinking this way for a long time. There will be one more chapter after this one, which is actually a prologue to the action in this series. I hope you enjoy it!

* * *

_Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm. _Marcus Garvey.

* * *

Niko's arms were being held by two of these damned _arurimi_ and he knew he was yelling, but couldn't calm himself down. "I tell you we don't have _time _to deal with whoever's in charge! A woman is in danger right _now_, you boneheaded behemoth!" He looked up at the sound of running feet, and watched as Keth and Dema ran down the stairs; Keth looked stunned, Dema determined.

"He says he knows where our boy is and who's the next victim. Wants us to turn out the whole force to track 'em."

"Let him go. What is it _Dhaskoi _Niko?" Dema asked.

Niko refrained from glaring at the men as they let go of his arms and one of them muttered, "_Dhaskoi? _He never said nothin' about bein' _dhaskoi._"

"Is this it? Is this why you're here?" Keth asked, holding out one of his globes.

"Where did that come from? Where—Tris?" Dema asked, looking into the cleared globe.

"I made it clear again," Keth explained as the three men gazed into the picture. Niko's heart gripped as he looked down on his student.

"This is why I'm here," Niko said. "I was scrying for the future, and this time the images came together." He tried to ignore that his hands were trembling as he laid them on the globe, his fingers touching Keth's. _You wouldn't have to ignore the trembling if you could convince yourself it was just from adrenaline, just from running here. Because you know it isn't. _Niko ignored the traitor-voice inside him and concentrated, pushing his magic through Keth's until the image of Tris shrank, showing her surroundings. "Where is that? Where is she?"

"Cricket Strut? Brosdes?"

"Cricket Strut. Near Silkfingers Lane."

"I've frozen it where she is right now," Niko said. "She won't be there when we arrive. We need Little Bear. He can track her. We need him and we need to move. This takes place in fifteen minutes, twenty if we are fortunate. Her life is about to intersect with the Ghost's—I don't know how, but if you want him to be alive when you question him, we must go!"

"The Bear's at Ferouze's. I'll get him and meet you at the corner of Chamberpot and Peacock." Keth was already running by the time he was finished speaking. He, at least, understood the urgency.

One of the _arurimi _muttered as Niko and Dema hurried in the other direction: "If you want _him_ to be alive?"

Niko thought, somewhat bitterly, that these men had no idea how close they were to disaster. Tris never did anything slightly, never did anything slowly. If she was going to begin her descent into darkness, it would happen fast. Theiros prided itself on being the birth of civilization. Let it not be the birthplace of something capable of destroying it. Not his Trisana.

Dema strood, his long legs never stalling as he barked orders to his men and hurried out into the street, towards Cricket Strut, but Niko bit his lip against impatience anyway. Keth was waiting just where he said he would be, passing the lead to Little Bear over to Niko without question as the group hurried in the dark. _Twenty minutes, if you're lucky? _the voice murmured. _It has already been twenty minutes. The Ghost has her, and she won't be able to stop herself, won't want to stop herself. How did you not see this coming? How did you not realize, as soon as the girl-child became involved—_

Niko shook his head. He had no time for this. Tris was what mattered.

They reached Cricket Strut to find it empty. Niko leaned forward, talking softly into Little Bear's ear. "Find Tris, Bear. Take me to Tris."

The dog didn't have to search for the scent before he was trotting ahead of them, pulling on the lead. Niko took this excuse to run towards his student.

_You'll never make it on time._

They rounded a corner and Niko pulled hard on the lead. "Hold, Little Bear!" he said, straining to keep the big animal from leaping in defence of Tris. If she hurt the dog, in this rage, she would be surely lost.

_And she isn't now?_

There was a man sunk in the ground to his waist, his expression twisted with rage and madness. Between Niko and the newly arrived Dema and Keth, was Tris standing over the Ghost, lightnings dropping from her hair to her feet. She was more out of control than she had been since she was a child and infinitely more powerful. Her voice was utterly emotionless as she spoke: utterly emotionless and as cold as the Syth. "You orphaned a little girl twice," she said, her grey eyes fixed on the face of the man before her as she dispensed her harsh justice. "You took two of her mothers. A little girl who never did you harm. You left her among strangers who might have thrown her in the street. Never once did you think of her."

_You should have known, as soon as the little girl became involved. You should have known what she would do for someone reminding her of herself. You should have seen the signs._

I know.

The Ghost snarled his reply. "Never once did anyone think of me! Fit to haul dung but not fit to be seen—this place is rotten. If she don't like the smell of rot, she shouldn't live here, and neither should you."

Lightning blazed down her arms. "No, _you _shouldn't live." Niko felt the magic, rather than saw it, with his student's back blocking her hands from him. He knew her magic, though, and didn't need his sight to know she was creating a lightning-bolt to kill the defenceless man she had trapped before her. Dema strode past him, heading toward Tris.

"No, Dema, let her do it! Don't stop her!" Keth called out, but it was Niko's hand that stopped Dema. He wasn't sure what would happen if the officer interrupted her now.

"For her own sake, she _must _be stopped," Niko said, glaring back at the glass-mage, who looked wild with grief and fury.

"Tris, give him up. If you kill him, I'll have to arrest you and have you executed," Dema said. His voice was calm, but his arm shook under Niko's restraining hand. A brave man terrified by the force of Tris's power, of her rage.

Behind him, Keth shouted again and Niko strove to ignore him. He wasn't important, now. Niko's gaze was centered on Tris.

"Is this what it comes to, Trisana?" he asked, his voice soft. "When you sank ships at Winding Circle, you defended your home. If you do this, it's murder. You will be a murderer by choice." He couldn't let that happen. It would destroy her. Utterly, she would be destroyed until she became the monster he feared, sometimes, that her parents had doomed her to be.

"_He deserves to die._" The rage in the fourteen-year-old's voice froze him utterly.

Dema walked away from his hand, towards Tris and the Ghost. "But do you deserve to kill him?" he asked. "Leave him to the State, Tris. That's what it's for. His first debt is to Tharios. Let him pay it."

There was a long, long moment before she turned and walked away from the man there. Dema leaped into action, but Niko's world had faded in sight and sound to his student. _Arurimi_rushed around them while Niko watched his student— her face, to any outsider, appearing as impassive as if she had just walked in for dinner— stop and pet Little Bear. Niko could see it, though—the turmoil she kept below the surface.

She had always been the emotional one, out of the four. Niko knew that it was when she was at her most impassive that she was the real danger, because the most deadly of her emotions, the real aches and deep, deep pains, they were kept hidden from the world. When she appeared to be at her most unemotional, it was when she had let go of the daily emotions, the trivial annoyances, and had embraced this deep darkness.

_That inner maelstrom? It will kill her, one day. If not today, if not with this murderer, than with the next. You know this. You have seen it._

The future changes, all of the time. Niko thought, angrily. I have seen her become a monster as I have seen them all become monsters. The future can be changed; it has to be changed.

Tris went to walk past him. Panicked, he grabbed her arm. "There's something I have to do right now. It's really important, Niko. Life and death, literally," she said. She was his Trisana, again. Wholly rational and he knew the price of not trusting her.

"Go," he said, reluctantly letting go of her arm, "but we need to talk later, you and I."

He watched her walk away into the dark streets of the city. He closed his eyes.

Five days later, Niko sat by his student's bed in Jumshida's house reading when Tris finally woke up.

More relieved than he cared to admit even to himself that she had woken, that she was the Tris he knew, he started in on a lecture that had been growing in his head while he waited by her bedside. Tris waited while he ranted until she finally got out of bed stiffly and went behind a screen to change.

"Are you even _listening_?" he asked.

"Not really. Either I am adult enough to have a medallion and a student and make my own stupid choices, or I'm not. It's not like I did it for part entertainment, Niko."

"No, I know you didn't," he said, sighing. _But t__he medallion has been worn by monsters before. _"I suppose I feel guilty because I should have helped you more, instead of letting conference politics sap my strength."

"Help me with what? I didn't help find him, I walked bang into the man, Niko! Is he dead yet?"

Pain welled up in him. She had come out from behind the screen and her tone, when she asked, was conversational. Her face was utterly expressionless. "Do you care so little, Tris? He paid in blood, yesterday."

"I feel sorrier for the _prathmuni_. There _was _a slaughter, wasn't there?"

"Sadly, yes. Twenty-nine _prathmuni_ dead, four of them children. The Keepers finally decreed martial law and ordered the _arurim_ to get the city under control."

"Twenty-nine?"

"I was shocked, too, but that's all that were found. Tharios's _prathmuni_ have vanished. The Assembly is fighting about who will do their work." Niko watched carefully and noted her grin. "I find it interesting that they left at almost the same time the Ghost was captured," he said. "Do you think they were warned?"

Tris ignored the question, which gave him his answer. Something important, she had said. He had known as soon as he heard about the escape of the _prathmuni_what his student had done before collapsing in Keth's house. "Where's Glaki? How's Keth?"

Niko supposed that was the way it would always be, with Tris. On the one hand, a casual and frightening disregard for life and on the other, a tender and fierce protective instinct for those she cared about. Her family had damaged her, but not completely. Her past had hardened her, but not past being capable of love. Niko walked with her downstairs, standing out of the way as she was greeted by her student and the child no one else would care for. A child like herself.

Tris hesitated before kissing the child on her lap tenderly on the cheek.

* * *

_Human misery must somewhere have a stop; there is no wind that always blows a storm._ Euripides.


	5. Staring Back

_What does not destroy me, makes me strong. _Friedrich Nietzsche.

* * *

Three thirteen year olds and a dog stood on a path outside of a little gate. The small girl held onto the leash of the dog and she watched it as it sniffed around the path. It looked back at her a whined when it became clear to it that they were not yet going for the walk it had been promised.

"In a moment, Little Bear," Sandry soothed. "Tris is on her way."

Briar leaned against the fence while Daja moved her staff from hand to hand.

"Where _is_ she anyway?" Briar huffed, looking up at the house. At that moment the door burst open and the redhead rushed down the pathway, clucking her tongue at Briar when he didn't move out of the way so she could open the gate and join them.

"What took you so long, Coppercurls?" he asked.

"I had to finish my chapter," she snapped. "The wait didn't kill you!"

They bickered as the four teenagers walked down the winding road towards the wall.

* * *

"Are the children inside?" Niko asked pacing in front of the three dedicates. Frostpine leaned against the counter while the two women of the house sat at the table.

"They took Little Bear out," Lark said. "Do you want them called in?"

"No," Niko replied. "I want to talk to the three of you privately."

"What about, Niko?" Lark asked. Frostpine and Rosethorn looked similarly interested as the normally calm mage paced before them.

"Niko, sit!" Rosethorn finally ordered. "You're going to drive us all crazy."

Niko smiled weakly and took a seat, rubbing his neck wearily.

"Now. What is it you want to talk to all three of us about?" Rosethorn asked, her voice deadly patient. "I have weeds that are not tending themselves."

"It is difficult," Niko said. "I am going to ask you don't interrupt."

Frostpine's eyebrows lowered. Lark felt a shiver travel up her arm. "Yes, yes," Rosethorn said. "What is it?"

"I have had visions of the four children since before I met them. Visions led me to them, of course. Most of the visions are mundane; images of Briar working in the garden or Sandry visiting her uncle, Daja delivering a note. Sometimes I get a glimpse of them in the past. You know that I get more visions about those I am familiar with?" The other mages nodded. "This is especially true of the four. I have seen more visions of their futures than about any other I have met before and some of them....

"The first one was after the earthquake. It was sparked by nothing in particular—the children weren't even in the room—but I saw.... Tris was standing in a tower....

_She was looking out over the water, her face like stone though her hair blew and whipped around her face like flames. She hadn't cut her hair in a long time, now, though lightning flickered through it almost constantly, the tiny flashes of light were blue sparks in her eyes._

"_He said, once, that I should live in a tower," she said, her cold voice seemingly directed to the ocean and cliffs below her._

"_And you believed him?" The voice came out of the darkness of the tower, but Daja stepped out onto the platform shortly after. She was dressed in crimson._

"_His visions came true," Tris said. "He just didn't have enough of them."_

_Daja looked out over the water and then spat over the side. "They would be alive if he had had _enough_ visions," she said, her voice unbearable bitter. "We would have been fine, if they were alive. We wouldn't have had to...."_

"_Winding Circle was corrupt. You know that."_

"_But still. They were our family."_

"_We had no families."_

There was utter stillness in the cottage. Niko refused to look at Frostpine, not wanting to see if the other man understood the words that had been spoken.

"The second was in Gold Ridge. Before any of the real trouble started, actually. I was scolding them for using their power to eavesdrop when it came to me. In it, Sandry and Briar were in Summersea, in the Citadel....

_Sandry was sitting in a throne that certainly was not in the citadel now, a sinister creation of iron and carved wood. Briar was nearly invisible in the darkness. He leaned against the wall behind Sandry's throne, watching the soldier who reported to them that citizens were outside the gates. They were terrified of the recent death of the Duke, terrified of the soldiers the Duke's son was sending against the city. Sandry didn't look up from her embroidery. _

"_Oh, kill them all," she said. "What does it matter, anyway?"_

_In the darkness, Briar grinned._

"No." Rosethorn's voice was forceful and too loud in the pause that followed Niko's words. Frostpine, too, shook his head but Niko's gaze found Lark. Her face was pale and her dark eyes met his, full of pain. They were her fears, too.

"It doesn't mean it will happen," Niko said.

"But it means it _could?_" Rosethorn snapped. "No. Not my boy."

"There have been more," Niko said, ignoring her words. He was used to people doubting the things he saw; especially when it was things they didn't want to believe.

Rosethorn's lips tightened and she looked like she would argue, but she remained silent.

"The third was during the plague....

"_...and then _what _Sandry? What is it we do then, after we have destroyed _everything _that meant _anything _to us?"_

"_It wasn't my fault, Daja!"_

"_You were the one—"_

"_I only wanted—"_

"_And I _trusted_ in you and that stupid circle—"_

"_It will work. I know it will work."_

"_Haven't you done _enough_, saati? It won't work. It was never going to work. We aren't strong enough—"_

"_We can do _anything we want to do_!" There was silence after that last half-mad shriek. Silence between the two girls, silence between them and the two dead lumps in the thread ring held, silence between them and silence amongst the death that surrounded them._

"_We can do it, Daja," Sandry whispered. "We can't be left alone in the dark again."_

"_It's not dark here, Sandry." The other girl held her hand before her eyes. "Sandry? Oh, gods. What have we done?" _

_The screaming cut through the silence, then._

"I don't understand," Lark said. "I don't understand where they go wrong, to end up in these places."

"It's almost impossible to tell," Niko said, sounding bone-weary. "Any number of small, seemingly innocuous decisions made for any number of reasons. I cannot tell you why these things had a chance of happening, just as I can't tell you why I have seen Sandry ruling peacefully in Emelan or Daja and Briar living happily in Summersea, or Tris at Lightsbridge, or any of the hundred other tiny futures that never come to pass for them; fights that don't happen, people they don't meet, places they don't go. I don't _know." _The silence rivalled that which haunted him from the previous vision.

"These are all from years ago, though," Lark said. "From when they first came to us, right after all of the traumas they were subjected to."

Niko nodded. "The bad ones were mostly from those early days and it does give me hope."

"But not all of them?" Lark asked.

Niko took a deep breath.

_Briar was sitting alone in a field of plants, none of which could stay still. They writhed, as if they were trying to escape. Or were in pain._

_Tris walked towards him, burning with lightning. The plants shrivelled and died, turning in on themselves as they crisped in her wake._

"_Briar...." she cried, looking down at the destruction she was reaping. _

_Briar looked up, his emerald-green eyes as hard as stone._

"_Where do we go now?" he asked, his voice cold._

"_Who would take us?" Tris asked. She looked as if she was crying, but the tears sparked and evaporated as they touched her cheeks. "After everything we've done?" She sat down, a mirror image of her brother. "They were going to take our power away," she said, to the sky rather than Briar. "What were we supposed to do? We couldn't... I can't be powerless again. Never again." She put her face in her hands._

_Briar looked down and screamed. The plants in the field, far away into the distance, died as one._

"I don't know what causes it. They are just moments in time. Although that last one, perhaps you can guess," Niko said.

"The Council wants us to bind their power," Rosethorn said, her voice harsh.

"Only until they're ready," Lark said. She glared at Frostpine as he snorted. "I'm not saying I agree."

"And if we give them their medallions?" Niko asked. "The medallion has been worn by monsters before."

"They are not monsters," Lark said. "They are children. Children who have been through horrific things, surely. Children who have had to do horrific things. But, Niko, they are our _students_. They are our... they are just children."

"We can weed out the darkness in them," Rosethorn said.

"They are not a garden, Rosethorn. They are human beings who have seen a great deal of pain in their lives and how are we to know what effect it will have on them in the future, as their power grows? If they had never come together, they would have been great mages, in time. All of you know that." Niko looked from Lark's tears to Rosethorn's quiet defiance and over to the smith, still standing against the counter with every muscle tight. "Together? Together, they could, indeed, do anything they wanted. That power in the hands of a noblewoman who watched a city die and sat, alone in the dark with the surety that she would join them? In the hands of a girl who has the stubbornness of iron and was in much the same position, floating amongst her dead only to be cast out from the only life she's known? A street boy who saw who knows what atrocities trying to survive? And a girl who has known only rage and isolation for a long, long time?"

"It is not our choice, to decide their fates for them," Frostpine said, his voice as taut as his stance. "We do not know what they will become. For every ounce of darkness, there is light and strength in all of them. And we do not have the _right _to decide where they're futures are going to lead."

"No, we do not."

"And so, what now?" Rosethorn asked. "What do we do now?"

"We watch," Niko said. "We watch them and we try to teach them all we can, bring all the light into their lives that is possible."

"And, I think, in the meantime, it would be best to tell the council we strongly favour them receiving their medallions," Lark added.

Niko nodded. With few other words (what was there, really, left to say?) he left Discipline.

* * *

_And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. _Friedrich Nietzsche.


End file.
